Mediated communication is not supported to its full potential by current communication media. The meaning of a personal relationship cannot be felt, and it is far from a “face to face” feeling.
The meaning of the personal relationship between communicants is especially relevant concerning important contacts and the communication habits and experience between them.
In this respect ambient telephony has been developed. Ambient telephony is an idea of blending communication into a home environment. The system consists of a set of loudspeakers and microphones around the house, which detect when the user moves and renders the call only in the area of the house where the person is, allowing free mobility, providing a ‘follow-me’ effect to the user. This allows for completely hands-free conversations, without the boundaries of a product or a physical location. It aims to elicit the feeling of a visit instead of just a phone call and to lower the awareness of mediation in the communication.
Several factors are important for the success and optimal experience of ambient telephony. Some examples of these are the sound quality and its spatial distribution, the extent to which the product blends with the home environment, the ease of use and the experience perceived by the users. Within the experience desired of ambient telephony, is social presence (also known as feeling of being together in a mediated environment).
Current ambient telephony suffers from low feedback of social presence of the remote caller. The freedom of movement that ambient telephony provides makes particularly relevant to provide feedback about the follow-me effect and where the call is being rendered. In order to provide with a rich feeling of being together, i.e. social presence, it is relevant to provide users with a feeling of the remote caller being there. Ambient telephony of today (a system installed in the ceiling of a room) also suffers from low feedback of the follow-me effect. More precisely, users are not sure whether the call followed them or not. Furthermore, ambient telephony suffers from lack of representation of the remote caller. While using ambient telephony, the user may miss a certain visual cue of the remote caller and a certain target to address in the conversation.
Thus, there is a need for a development within the field of ambient telephony allowing for improved follow-me effect, and an improved representation of the remote caller, including potential mood and/or frame of mind.
Accordingly, the present invention preferably seeks to mitigate, alleviate or eliminate one or more of the above-identified deficiencies in the art and disadvantages singly or in any combination and solves at least the above mentioned problems by providing an ambient telephone communication system, a method, and computer-readable medium according to the appended patent claims.
An idea of the present invention is to provide an ambient telephone system comprising a light emitting unit configured to display light having different properties depending on the information signal, comprising speech information, sent between at least two conversation parties. The color and intensity is selected such that it resembles certain behaviors of intimacy and immediacy. In this way the ambient telephone system provides a feeling of social presence (feeling of being together) by rendering a meaningful abstract representation of the remote caller, and the light emitting unit functions as an object at which the user may focus their attention on during the call.
Consequently, an advantage of the present invention is that it makes the user experience richer because intimacy and immediacy cues are rendered resembling a face to face communication. Moreover, it also provides feedback about how the conversation is being performed.
An important feature of the present invention is the display of light from a phone-let from a set of one or more phone-lets, where the call is rendered in a certain way that the user associates with his/her remote caller. Certain properties of the emitted light may further enrich the calling experience by detecting and rendering meaningful properties of the caller and/or conversation via motion patterns. This way the phone-let becomes a meaningful representation of the caller, providing with a feeling that both communicants are in the same room and feedback of movement when the user moves around in the home.
According to an aspect of the invention an ambient telecommunication system is provided. The ambient telecommunication system comprises a set of transmitters and a corresponding set of receivers for transmitting and receiving an electronically or digitally encoded information signal between two or more conversing parties. Moreover, the ambient telecommunication system comprises at least one light emitting unit, connected to a transmitter or receiver, wherein the light emitting unit is configured to emit light when its corresponding transmitter or receiver is in an active mode.
According to another aspect of the invention a method for operating an ambient telecommunication system for transmitting and receiving an information signal between two or more conversing parties is provided. The method comprises selecting a transmitter and a corresponding receiver, among a set of transmitters and corresponding receivers. The method further comprises transmitting and receiving an electronically or digitally encoded information signal, from the transmitter and the receiver. Furthermore, the method comprises emitting light from a light emitting unit connected to the selected transmitter or receiver.
In yet another aspect a computer-readable medium is provided, having embodied thereon a computer program for processing by a computer. The computer program comprises a code segment for selecting a transmitter and a corresponding receiver, among a set of transmitters and corresponding receivers. Moreover, the computer program comprises a code segment for transmitting and receiving an electronically or digitally encoded information signal from the transmitter and the receiver. Furthermore, the computer program comprises a code segment for emitting light from a light emitting unit, connected to the selected transmitter or receiver.